


The Price of Knowledge

by JoJo



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s02e08 Chinatown, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8056150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: Chris doesn't actually know what went on up in Ezra's room.  He just knows it hurts.





	The Price of Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to wonderful prompter and beta farad who suggested 'C/E after Li Pong', and then saved me from embarrassment when I forgot where Vin ought to have been. All mistakes my own.

(1) 

It was Sara who’d always said she couldn’t abide either a tell-tale or a tattler. And could never decide if she thought they were the same thing or different.

Strange when her quirky wisdoms came at him from the past. 

Chris worried the bristles on his neck, forked in the last of his food. It was re-heated and tough. Even with the faintest whispers of Sara’s voice, brushing past his consciousness like a breeze in the night, he was still firmly in the present moment. He chewed, discontent. 

They were lucky they’d been let in to eat out of hours in the restaurant tonight, but he didn’t intend to outstay his welcome. Next to him Nathan, having tattled his tale, was still grumbling on across the table to Vin about what had been going on in town last night, although he seemed calmer than when he’d come in.

“Well if she went to him she must’ve felt safe.” Vin shrugged and pushed away his plate. He'd ridden back from the watch camp to check in with Chris, fill up on some hot grub so a fire didn't give him away. Normally he'd turn that around in a matter of a half hour, but he was still here. Seemed he was interested in what Nathan had to say.

“She wanted to see him all right, came into town at dusk asking just about everyone for... huh,” and Nathan gave a snort, “the man in the red coat.”

“And she’s up there again?”

A pause – to underline the effect, Chris thought uncharitably. 

“Well I saw her with my own two eyes last night, taking his boots off for him, and pretty sure she ain't come out since then seein' how punchy Ezra's being with me. Yes she's up there, and he just went up too. Don’t seem right. Don’t know what he's thinking of.”

Eyes on his plate, Chris heard the soft rumble of Vin’s sigh. The man wasn’t one to get too proddy about other folks' morality. Although, if he was going to start, probably Ezra would be somewhat high on the list. They had their tussles over right and wrong did Vin and Ezra, and it tore at Chris a little sometimes. Something else tore at him right now – _don’t know what he's thinking of_ – and he dropped the fork against the plate with a clatter. 

Vin’s eyes slid to him, wary. 

“She seem like she didn’t feel safe with Ezra?” Tanner asked, looking back at Nathan.

Nathan frowned at him. “No,” he said, and he blew out a breath, shoulders relaxing a little. “To tell you the truth, just the opposite.” He shook his head, still mystified. “Felt so safe she was gettin’ ready to bed down on his floor. Well, last night anyhow.”

“Going to swing round town, check all’s quiet,” Chris said, abrupt. He worked a shred of meat lodged between molars with his tongue, wiped his mouth on the checkered napkin and then dug in his pocket for some money. On occasion they were offered meals on the house, but generally only when their currency was high or if they’d been shot at for town’s benefit with particular ferocity. As he stood up, dropping the coins on the cloth, he was aware of Vin’s eyes on him. Not a stare, just one of his careful, hooded appraisals, expressing no censure. But full of thoughts just the same.

“Take it easy,” Vin said, and that could have meant a lot of things. 

"You too. Told you what Brauner said if he saw any one of us out there, so keep your head down. We'll see you tomorrow."

Nathan grunted a farewell at him as he pushed away his chair. 

Ezra and this young Chinese woman being upstairs at the saloon bothered Jackson deeply, Chris could see that. Damn, the whole, low business of a young woman being sold off like chattel bothered him, never mind how Ezra had gotten mixed up in it. From what little Chris knew of the Mah-Jong incident back at the camp, Ezra hadn’t covered himself in glory as usual, but he had at least agreed she was free to go. Nathan had grudgingly admitted that much. Hearing she’d turned up in town and gone straight to find her new ‘master’ had jolted Chris though. And not in the same way it had jolted Nathan.

He walked out of the restaurant, tipping his hat at the proprietor.

The air outside was a relief. It had grown stuffy indoors. His plan had been to check in next door at the jailhouse and then take a walk in the direction of the church to see how Josiah and Wo Chin were getting along. But now, standing out on the boardwalk, he couldn’t help himself staring right across the street at the Saloon.

When he and Josiah had arrived back in town with the boy, Ezra had been waiting for him. To find out what was going on, so he'd said, although maybe he'd wanted to talk about something else now Chris thought about it. They'd shared a brief, rather precious, shot of whiskey in the Saloon, but Ezra hadn't said anything then. Not one word about that girl. Chris had just been glad to have five minutes of his company. Before Vin rode in and Ezra suggested, not without a hint of bitterness that Chris would be wanting to go and have some dinner with him.

Chris could feel the agitation of unwelcome emotions in his gut. The sound of voices floated out over the batwings. The lights inside were bright. Chris set his jaw, wouldn’t let his eyes stray to the windows above, to Ezra’s room. His dinner sat uneasy in his belly. What was it Nathan had said?

_Saw her with my own eyes, taking his boots off for him._

And that made him feel properly nauseous.

Chris scythed his bottom lip with his teeth, angry at himself. Well, he didn’t know anything bad, and couldn’t guess. Shouldn’t even try. It was Ezra’s affair, and he was his own man. As far as romance and sex and all those things went, Chris thought he knew how Ezra felt about women. Loved ’em, feared ‘em, wanted to protect ‘em, but that was all. Chris’s past was a different story, but Ezra had always claimed, despite his mother’s hopes, he’d only ever been intimate with men. And, lately, most definitely, only with Chris.

This girl was no threat, how could she be?

Chris walked down the boardwalk, moody. He wasn’t even sure where the whole notion of threat had come from. That seemed to suggest there was something important and meaningful going on between him and Ezra, and, as good as it was, Chris didn’t know if that could possibly be true. At any rate, this Chinese girl was probably just like so many of the people they’d met of late – someone with a heavy heart. A heavy heart in this case lightened by a show of chivalry, some broad shoulders in a fancy coat, and a pair of bright eyes. Not so different from what lightened Chris himself, and not exactly anything to blame her for. 

He’d stomped the boardwalk until Wo Chin appeared, took the whole question clean out of his head for a while.

Nevertheless, Chris knew he was already tying himself up in the kind of knot he despised in others. For most the night that followed he couldn’t stop worrying at it, despite his best efforts. 

What was she like, the girl who’d come to find Ezra? And why would she be up there with him in his room if they weren’t...

Up there, with him.

He caught a glimpse of her for the first time in the early morning light, when they were already racing hell for leather out of town. When everything had changed. When Josiah had already been in the saddle, yelling at them about Wo Chin skipping town back to the camp. And then Nathan had come steaming down the saloon steps to tell them Ezra was out there too.

She – the girl-woman – was standing outside the saloon, her long braid of black hair hanging over her shoulder, one hand held near her eyes against the dust.

Li Pong, as Chris now knew she was called.

Young. Careworn.

And pretty, oh so pretty.

While they’d been mounting up Nathan said she’d told him Ezra had decided to go and ‘help her people’.

“Ezra said _whut_?” Buck had barked in disbelief, twisting around in his saddle.

“Miss Li says Brauner’s ledgers show how he’s been cheating the workers.” Nathan’s voice was tinged with both disbelief and self-criticism. “Ezra’s gone to find them.”

“More like a mess of bad trouble,” Buck said, hitting the main point. “Damn fool’s gonna get hisself shot full of holes.”

Chris felt a strange, stinging heat in his gut. “Stupid ass. Should’ve told someone, should’ve damn well told all of us.”

He wasn’t sure if anyone heard him say that, angry, fearful, full of regret. They were already picking up speed after Josiah, out past the Stage Company office and away from town towards the camp. Probably best they didn’t hear, couldn’t tell how he felt.

For, although the anger at Ezra was hot enough, the fear of losing him to a fool mission where he should have had back-up was almost molten.

(2)

In the end, nobody got themselves killed, although it was a close-run thing.

Chris’s fear had cooled by degrees across the day, but somehow his anger didn’t. If it was anger he was feeling, that uncomfortable burn in his belly.

When they all made it back to town, Ezra went straight to the bath house.

Between them Yosemite, Vin and Buck were dealing with the horses and tack inside. Josiah and J.D. were sluicing themselves with cold water from the pump up the street, and Nathan had loped off, stiff, upstairs. 

Chris was interested only in Ezra’s determined walk away from the livery. Although he wanted to call out to him, he kept quiet. Ezra had looked perfectly dapper when he’d turned up with Vin on the way into the Chinese camp, but Vin had filled Chris in on what had happened. Not everything, just enough. Tanner said he'd hardly believed what he was seeing through the spy-glass when he glimpsed Ezra's horse at first light below his watch-point. Didn't know what the hell Ezra thought he was doing, but knew going in to the camp alone, after what Brauner had threatened, was akin to suicidal. Vin had managed to get down to him but damn, it had been too close for comfort.

“Found him digging.” Vin had been meaningful, and disgusted. 

“Waterhole?” Chris had been wry, even through the sudden pit in his stomach.

“Not hardly.”

“He all right?”

“Yup.”

“Thanks to you?”

“Yup.” And Vin had grinned.

So that was that. If Ezra was covered in dust from being coerced into digging his own grave, then he’d be wanting a tub sooner rather than later. That was normal for most men, just double with Ezra. There was something else, though.

Chris was impatient when he considered that.

Ezra hadn’t said much on the trail home. He’d been pre-occupied. Even, Chris thought with a pang, on the wistful side of quiet, and that would make sense. Because Chris had glanced over when everything was being sorted out, seen the farewell between Ezra and the girl. From a distance, mind, but still clear enough. The way Ezra had held Li Pong’s little hands. The way she’d touched his lips with hers. The way she’d embraced him as if she didn’t want to let him go. As, perhaps, she had done before.

Chris wasn’t used to people loving Ezra for anything other than being a son. He was more used to people finding him a pain in their ass.

He went back to his room, cleaned himself up at the washstand. Regarding his whiskers in the glass he contemplated a shave, even picked up his razor. Somehow he didn’t have the energy for it. Mary Travis had been giving him looks askance at his appearance of late, and actually that kind of suited him. Not that annoying Mary was admirable, and of course he valued their friendship, but being at odds over certain things helped set the right distance between them. The distance had always felt natural, but it seemed more important now. Now he had someone else that, apparently, he cared about. She thought she knew him, but... Chris stroked under the scruff of beard. Ezra liked it well enough. Maybe it ought to stay for a while longer. 

*

As they’d become accustomed, they talked in the saloon that evening about the Chinese workers, and everything that had happened, even though they’d arrived home late.

Chris took some ribbing about the whiskers but didn’t rise. The boys were – for the most part – in high spirits, tired as they were after the fighting and the ride back to town. There was some running joke going on between Inez, Buck, and J.D., but Chris didn’t mind not knowing what it was. Nathan’s mood had improved as well.

“You’d better not mention that $7 to me again,” he said to Ezra once they were loose-lipped and warm-bellied from liquor. His eyes twinkled. “But heck, guess I owe you an apology.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Ezra drawled back. Chris recognized the faintest flash of irritation in his eyes but any barb was softened by the whiskey.

“You did a good thing,” Josiah ruled, legs stretched under the table. “Paying that girl’s passage home to her family.” Sanchez had enjoyed his time with the Chinese, despite some of the language missteps, and he was cheerful and expansive.

“Two good things.” J.D. was forthright in correcting him. “Going out there at all was a good thing as well – we needed the proof Brauner was a crook to set things right.”

“Well then, I’d say one good thing and one damn fool thing.” That was Buck’s offering. 

“'bout right for us.” Vin was light, too, and full of humor. 

Chris wished he felt the same. Catching Ezra’s eye once, he didn’t care for his expression. As soon as they were caught, the green eyes dropped, quick, to the cards. Almost guilty. And Chris certainly didn’t care for the unpleasant, bothered feeling he was carrying himself.

They needed to have words. Chris wanted to know.

But space to talk like lovers whenever they pleased was not a luxury they could afford.

Not that night, and not for many a night after. 

Not until six days had passed. Six whole days of not much talking to one another. Until Ezra was despatched by chance (and virtue, he’d said, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) to Eagle Bend on an errand for Nathan - for which he was vainly holding out for a $7 fee.

Chris didn’t say anything to him before he left. He’d made it known the day before he was intending to head out to his shack for a day or two. Do some chores. Ezra took his instructions and left town without comment.

But of course, as Chris had hoped all along, he headed home from Eagle Bend via the shack.

(3)

In fact, he was sitting on the porch waiting when Chris got back just before dusk from fetching water for the barrel, and kindling for the stove.

His horse was tended, standing quiet in the stall. Ezra was on the steps, jacket and hat removed. His hair was mussed and sweaty from the trail and he’d inadvertently swiped some grime across his forehead. He had his boots off, too, and was rubbing at one silk-socked heel as if it was paining him.

“Made good time,” Chris observed as he dumped down the barrel and the bag of wood he was carrying. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand, hot from his exertions. Then he just stood still, enjoying the sight before him.

Ezra squinted up through the last slanting rays of evening sun, apparently equally pleased with what he could see. “I was anxious to get here.” A smile cracked his grubby face. “And now I remember why.”

“Only now?”

“I forget sometimes how charming you look during physical... exertions.”

A low laugh rumbled in Chris’s throat. “Suppose you get off your butt and come say hello nicely.”

Ezra pushed up, stumbled to his feet. As he came close he leaned in at once for a kiss, languid. He took Chris’s lower lip between his, grazed it gently with his teeth. A familiar sigh of pleasure vibrated through him. Chris felt his own pulse bump, the sweet rush of burgeoning arousal. Two shirt buttons popped then there was the brush of a hand on his skin, fingers tracing the line of sweat down his sternum. He groaned into Ezra’s mouth, but then something not quite pleasant shivered right through him, and he pulled away.

“There some problem?” Ezra asked, immediately on guard. He dropped his hand, waiting.

Chris brushed the backs of his fingers lightly over his own lip against the tingle. He took a breath. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“You mean, I assume, Li Pong,” Ezra said after the briefest hesitation, and the fact that he didn’t evade or feign either ignorance or nonchalance made Chris feel worse. Made the arousal disappear like a doused flame.

“I suppose.”

“You surprise me.”

“It’s just that Nathan said...”

Ezra slouched on one hip. “Let me guess. Nathan said I had that poor girl closeted in my room so I could have my evil way with her.” He almost sounded amused.

“He didn’t say that.” Chris swallowed. “He just kind of set the scene.”

Ezra looked at him for a long while, a breeze shifting his bangs. “The scene,” he said, “was that I suggested she sleep in my bed, for a comfort she’d never had before. I myself was to be cosy on the floor.”

“And that’s it?”

That was when Ezra’s eyes dropped again, just as they had in the saloon.

“Not quite.”

Chris rubbed his chest. “Look,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to me if you fucked her, Ezra. I just want to know.”

Knowing was everything, so he thought. But maybe too much.

“Well I think you’re telling me an untruth here,” Ezra said, stung. “But, if it really doesn’t mean anything to you, I kissed her.” He emphasized the next words for particular effect. “I was intimate with her.”

Chris’s brow bunched. “Intimate?” Something poisonous burned his gut. “What in hell does that mean?”

“We lay on the bed, and I tried to make her feel... nice. I do know how to attempt that with a pretty woman, strange as it may seem. She repaid the compliment, shall we say. We sat like lovers in a chair and talked. That was it.”

Like lovers. In that chair. On that bed.

It hurt more than Chris had been expecting, even though he knew to be jealous was really to be stupid and self-defeating. He wanted to ask needy, school-boy questions. Did she know Ezra already had a lover when she parted her lips to kiss him? 

“God’s sake,” he said, angry at something he couldn’t quite grasp. “I don’t even know why I’m pissed at you.”

Ezra rolled his neck in a slow circle, easing out some kinks of tension. “Well,” he said in a lazy, Georgia hum. “If the tables were turned, I’d probably have left town right about now, and not come back.” He slanted his eyes upwards again, met Chris’s square on. “And so. Do you feel any better, now you know?”

“Can’t say I do.” Chris glanced up at the darkening sky. 

“There must be a reason,” Ezra said. “Why I feel guilty and you feel wronged.” He frowned, reached a tentative hand to brush gently against the grain of Chris’s whiskers. “Would you like me to go?”

Chris closed his eyes. He reached a hand to snag Ezra’s belt, tugged him in. “I saw how much she thought of you,” he said around a lump in his throat. “How you looked right together.”

“I don't know about right, but I can't deny I felt something very profound for her. Something, I daresay, I’ve never felt for a woman before.”

There was a sadness in Chris then that he thought he might never get past. It was all tied up with Sara, the look on her face when he’d tried to... make her feel nice. How she was feisty and sweet and had loved him. How she’d gazed at him sometimes the way Li Pong had gazed at Ezra. As if she never wanted to let him go. He wished he didn’t know that about Li Pong. He really wished...

“Ezra,” he began.

“The thing is,” Ezra interrupted, moving against him so the hairs stood up on the back of his neck in spite of himself. “That I only wanted to make her feel nice.” He rubbed a cheek against Chris’s beard and Chris didn’t stop him. “I didn’t want to fuck her. I didn’t want, not for one single second, to pour myself into her. I didn’t want to wake up every single day I was allowed and find her in my bed." He took in a staccato breath. "Not the way I want to with you.”

Chris opened his mouth without being able to help himself, let Ezra’s tongue in. There was a cool breeze slapping against the back of his shirt but there was a spreading heat in his belly and it was the heat that made him shiver.

“We need to go inside,” he stuttered, pulling away for a second time. 

“Yes we do,” Ezra said, and his eyes were almost steely in the half-light. “But only... only if it’s just you and me.”

“What?” Chris was confused by that.

“I’m not planning on bringing Li Pong in with me, if you get my drift. And I don’t expect you to be bringing anyone in either.”

For just a second it pained Chris worse than he could say. He’d never thought to leave Sara behind. Never.

But this was Ezra. Who’d come out here especially to be with him. Who wanted him in a way Chris couldn’t quite believe. He was filled with regret and longing, all the hurt he feared would never go away. 

And yet.

Ezra, just by turning up, always stirred a desire in him – a desire for something good. Both Buck and Vin had told him if he ever found such a thing again he needed to damn well hang on to it for all he was worth.

He swallowed. Swallowed again. Caught the faintest tang of Ezra’s cologne as he breathed in a lungful of air.

“All right,” he said, shaky. “I’ll bring the fuel, you bring the barrel.”

“You sure now?” Ezra ran his tongue over his bottom lip. 

Chris bent to gather the bag of wood, belly in a knot. He took it inside, dumped it, and came out again. It wasn't a surprise to find Ezra still standing there, frozen. He evidently didn't understand that his last question had been answered already. So Chris slid a hand round the back of his neck and gave him a proper kiss. A hard, wet, proper kiss designed to stir his own blood, tell Ezra what was what, and hopefully to rock him off his stockinged feet just a little. The fact he'd nearly gotten himself executed and tipped into a shallow dirt grave deserved some kind of punishment, surely.

“The barrel,” he said, gruff, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And don’t forget your damned boots. Everything else we leave outside.”

He watched Ezra carry the barrel in, gratifyingly obedient, then return to fetch his jacket and boots before disappearing back through the door. 

Chris looked around, to make sure everything seemed in order out here. He gave a half glance at the sweetly curved new moon just showing over the trees. For once something that reminded him of Sara didn't leave him winded. Impossible to forget how much she’d always loved the sight. But maybe, he thought, maybe that was the point.

Following Ezra inside, he closed the door firmly behind him.

 

-ends-


End file.
